Extra drowsy Formula

Possibly I should make sure to update this more regularly, rather than adding 3 songs in one day.

“Thanks to the Wishing Well” is my entry to a MetaFilter challenge to write a song with only two chords; this one uses D and G.

Instruments used, in order of appearance: Autoharp, marimba, marxophone, triangle, glockenspiel, and accordion.

I have a couple of other songs in different stages of completion that might only use two chords, but when I was messing around with one of them I accidentally wrote this one instead. Lyrics came about through one of my favorite methods, the “open your mouth and start making sounds” method; once I knew what the song was about I was able to figure out the rest of it.

Technical notes: There are actually two autoharp tracks. When figuring out the structure, I took single autoharp chords and cut and pasted and looped them; that track is still there, panned all the way to the left, and then there’s a straight-up ‘harp track dead center.

No electronic instruments, a rarity for me. Everything was recorded with the ShinyBox ribbon mic. Backup vox were recorded through the Electroharmonix Voice Box, and they’re doubled with a second, higher octave on top, but I can’t pick it out in the mix.

“I Gave You Lots of Presents (But You Left Me In the Past)” is a tale of love long lost. If you’re going to try and buy happiness, remember to keep the receipt. Autoharp, vocals, and a little bit of honky-tonk toy piano.

This arose from a songwriting exercise where you look around you and quickly write song titles based on whatever is lying around. For instance, I’m in the dining room right now, and I see a mug, a telephone, a piano, a ceiling light/fan, and a cat. Okay, so going as fast as I can and thinking as little as possible, I make up the song titles: “I Love Your Mug,” “1-800-THIS-SONG,” “88 Keys That Don’t Open Anything,” “Blow Out the Light,” and “Hey, That’s My Cat.” Obviously, most song titles you get this way will suck. But every now and then you’ll get a good one; one that never would have otherwise occurred to you.

It must have been around Christmas or someone’s birthday when I came up with this one.

Technical details: Let’s see. There’s Autoharp with a split signal panned, unevenly, L-R. Toy piano. Synth bass (Alesis Micron). Combination of real and fake drums (the snare is real; the kick is fake; the cymbals, I think, might be both). One lead vocal and a couple of backups; the backups were recorded bit by bit as I figured parts out. I think that’s it; it’s a pretty simple song.

Most of the songs I write tend to have a I-IV-V chord progression. I write songs away from any instument at all, at when I pick up the autoharp, hey! it turns out that it’s I-IV-V. I’m well aware that this is a limitation.

To combat this, I bought a book called Chord Progressions for Songwriters — it’s a list of tons of chord progressions, and it gives examples of songs that use them and classifies them — “folk,” “blues,” whatever.

I flipped through it and found a “Doo-Wop” chord progression — I-VIm-IV-V — not too different, but the addition of that VIm chord, sure enough, sounds like an old Doo-Wop song. So I started playing it (in this case, F-Dm-Bb-C) and making up silly words about sock hops and stuff. And one of the things I sung was the line, “when my baby was mine.”

That, I thought, has to be the name of a song already. But I couldn’t find evidence of it existing. So I figured I should write it. Here it is.

I would normally never write a song called “When My Baby Was Mine.” But this messing around with a — for me — totally new chord progression tumbled me in a direction that I would normally never go. I deem this Experiment #2 — force yourself to find a new chord progression. See where it leads.

Instruments include autoharp (one fairly clean, one distorted and pitched down an octave), drum machine, and a Q-Chord during the bridge. Words are here.

Today — January 1st — I’m going to buy myself a cheap daily calendar — the kind where you tear off a page each day. Every day this year I’ll write down a song title (or at least every day on average. I’ll try not to fall behind but I’m allowed to get ahead). At the end of the year, I’ll have 365 song titles to act as future inspiration!

Most of them will be lousy, but that’s how this sort of “forced creativity” activity works. I could say, “oh, I’ll wait until they come to me naturally,” but I find that if I make a habit of forcing myself to write, thing come to me naturally more often. So we’ll see if this kickstarts anything.

I think at least half my songs start with me thinking of a title. If they don’t, the title is hard for me to come up with and often ends up generic or boring. I wonder how many songs have names that have nothing to do with the lyrics but were simply more interesting than anything in the words?

(Edited later — lemme just clarify that the point here is not to force myself to write a title a day, but to get myself into the habit of recognizing song titles when they appear in front of me.)